CEU Podcasts

Adinel Dincă is Associate Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB) in Cluj-Napoca.  In this interview he talks about his major research project “Restory – Recovering Past Stories for the Future: A Synergistic Approach to Textual and Oral Heritage of Small Communities”.  While this project focuses on the little known group of Transylvanian Saxons, it includes partners from all over Europe. The pr...

This episode is a bit more different then our last ones, we get to travel a bit in time. Back in April, we hosted a live conversation on academic freedom, what it means, why it’s under attack, and how scholars navigate increasing political and institutional pressures. Revisiting it today reveals just how much the landscape has continued to deteriorate. With Alina Dragolea as host and contributions...

The Collaboration Code is a podcast that explores engaged research and collaborative projects between academic and civil actors. The first guest of the series is Yuki Seidler, manager of CEU's Science for Society Hub. The episode deals with the changing role of universities and engaged research as a way to respond to the challenges academia is facing. We talk about how social sciences navigate the...

The Collaboration Code is a podcast that explores the collaborative projects between academic and civil actors. The series deals with engaged research, the questions of a changing academia and the future pathways for social sciences. 

In this episode of Protecting Academia at Risk, we look at what happens when the boundaries between science, politics, and ideology are deliberately blurred and who benefits from that blurring. Featuring Andrea Pető, Dina Gusejnova, Nadia Kiss, Bernhard Kleeberg, Alina Drăgolea, and Elena Trifan, the conversation moves from the attacks on gender studies to the deeper structural mechanisms that all...

In this interview, Nicholas Tayler talks about his thesis research into the migration of missionaries and merchants from the Lotharingian region, in the current day Low Countries, to ‘New Europe’ and specifically to Hungary. Nick looks at how he is tracing this fascinating, but largely forgotten migration route from Lotharingia to Hungary through a mixture of documents and histories, mostly from e...

In this episode, we have a special guest Professor Achim Kemmerling and we talk about what it means to protect knowledge when mobility is not an option. Professor Achim Kemmerling leads Research-at-Risk, an initiative at the Brandt School that reimagines how universities in safer contexts can support scholars working under authoritarian regimes or in resource-poor environments. From Myanmar to Afg...

In this interview, Lena Sadovski talks about her current research into the community of New Christian merchants trading between Apulia in southern Italy, and Spalato, modern day Split, in Dalmatia in the 15th and 16th century. Lena explains who the New Christians were, and why they moved between Apulia and Spalato. She shows how, and why this route of international trade was so important for Spala...

Wars don’t just destroy institutions, they reconfigure what counts as knowledge. In this episode, Elena Trifan speaks with Nadiya Kiss, Dina Gusejnova, and Andrea Pető about how the war in Ukraine has transformed academic hierarchies, disciplines, and solidarities across Europe. From the sudden visibility of Ukrainian studies to the rise of securitized and market-driven universities, Epistemic Fro...

In this interview, Katalin Szende, Professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European University, and founding member and current President of MECERN, talks about her on-going research into Fair Relations: Business, Church and Power in the 11th – 13th Century.  Her focus is on the cathedral cities of the three major polities of the period and region, Bohemia, Poland and Hungary, their differenc...

In this episode of Protecting Academia at Risk, we ask a pressing question: why don’t we seem to learn from the past? The host is Elena Trifan and together with Andrea Pető, Dina Gusejnova, Nadiya Kiss, Bernhard Kleeberg and Alina Dragolea, we explore how anti-gender discourses became state policies, why mistrust and crises undermine our ability to recognize patterns, how hubris and neoliberal ref...

In this interview, Gregor Rohmann, Professor for Regional Cultural History, University of Rostock, talks about his research into Pirates and Privateers – a Linguistic Conundrum of the 15th Century Baltic. Gregor considers how pirates, and the concepts and semantics related to piracy emerged in the Baltic. He links the emergence of specific actors who engaged in armed violence at sea to the need fo...

This episode of Protecting Academia at Risk marks the beginning of a new series that examines how the global landscape of higher education and academic freedom has shifted since our previous recordings. The discussion engages with the implications of Trump’s Project 2025, the growing politicization of knowledge production, and the emergence of new geographies of risk — including within the United...

A podcast on the protection of academic freedom by the OPEN Cost Action (www.opencostaction.eu)Description:Around the world—and particularly across Europe—higher education institutions are confronting escalating political, cultural, and ideological challenges that threaten their core values and independence. Academics—among the most directly impacted—often find themselves without the institutional...

In this interview, Karen Stark discusses her on-going research into the cult of the Virgin Mary in late medieval Hungary.  Originally an archaeologist, Karen retains a great interest in material culture and place-making, and she uses this lens to analyse the Marian cult. Following King Stephen I dedicating the Hungarian kingdom to the Virgin, Karen notes how later kings venerated, and promoted the...

A "Média és valóság viszonya a 21. században" című kurzusunk utolsó alkalmának felvétele 2025 május 21-én. Kurzusvezető: Balázs Zsuzsanna - újságíróA kerekasztal résztvevői: Bánszegi Rebeka, a 24.hu közéleti-politikai újságírójaKálmán Attila, az Investigate Europe oknyomozó újságírójaTőke János, a Szabad Magyar Szó szerkesztőjeTeczár Szilárd, a Lakmusz főszerkesztőjeAz újságírói kerekasztal eredet...

The Collaborative Seminar Cultures of Hate and Oppression was coordinated to address the complexities of these topics that are of urgent global importance in our era of continuing discrimination, forced migration, socially sanctioned violence, and war.

The Collaborative Seminar Cultures of Hate and Oppression was coordinated to address the complexities of these topics that are of urgent global importance in our era of continuing discrimination, forced migration, socially sanctioned violence, and war. This podcast gives insights into the work of the students.

In this interview, Jakob Zsambok of The Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, talks about the Seshat and Cliopatria databases, what they contain, their data sources and confirmation, and how they are accessed, used and enhanced by historical researchers. Seshat: Global History Databank, founded in 2011, aims to bring together the most current and comprehensive body of knowledge about human history in...

What happens when universities shift from being spaces of critical thinking and public knowledge to institutions shaped by market logic? In this episode, we explore the transformation of higher education under neoliberalism—how academia has moved away from its traditional role and into a system driven by efficiency metrics, privatization, and corporate partnerships. Andrea Pető, Dina Gusejnova, El...

In this interview, Grzegorz Pac, Professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw, discusses his on-going research into the cult of saints and canonisation in Medieval Poland.  Through a case study of the canonisation of St Stanislaus of Krakow, Grzegorz focusses on how a saint, particularly a popular and highly venerated saint, could confer symbolic capital onto a specific church,...

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2dB0O0F14zW7Vyxrfcml2N?si=Q5lHLPM3Sr-861hbLZyASgA mintegy 700 ezer Szovjetunióba vitt hadifogoly és civil internált sorsa abszolút tabu volt a szocializmus évtizedei alatt. A rendszerváltás után azonban berobbant a memoár irodalom, és megalakultak a fogságba esett magyarok és elhurcoltak emlékét őrző szervezetek is. A szovjet fogság története mára a második világhá...

In this episode, we explore the often-overlooked struggles of at-risk scholars, focusing on the absence of Belarus in discussions on academic freedom, the gendered dimensions of displacement, and the systemic exclusions within global academia. Tania Artemovich discusses how Belarusian scholars have been marginalized in protection programs, despite facing decades of repression, while also addressin...

In this episode of Protecting Academia at Risk, we explore the urgent challenges facing universities today, from the rise of right-wing movements in Europe to the ongoing struggles of displaced and at-risk scholars. Together with Andrea Pető, Dina Gusejnova, Bernhard Kleeberg, Tania Arcimovich, Nadiya Kiss, and Elena Trifan, we discuss how universities can reclaim their role as spaces of free thou...

A pesti gettót hozták létre utoljára a II. világháború alatt. Ebben az előadásban a gettó rövid történetéről, illetve a gettólakók által átélt érzelmekről van szó: milyen fontosabb eseményekhez, helyszínekhez kapcsolódóan számoltak be érzéseikről a túlélők? Hogyan írták le azokat? Milyen szerepük volt az érzelmeknek a gettólakók életében?